San Jose man recalls deployment to immediate wake of Hurricane Sandy

Patrick Van Thull in his San Jose home Saturday, Jan. 5, 2012. Thull is an officer with the Immigration and Naturalization Service, but was among the volunteers who stepped up to help out in the wake of Superstorm Sandy.

SAN JOSE -- Patrick Van Thull is still fighting the tail end of a cough he's had since early November.

It's understandable. Where some people would typically get some rest, Van Thull instead spent six weeks taking part in relief efforts by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the immediate wake of Hurricane Sandy's devastation on the Atlantic Coast.

Just several weeks removed from the intense, all-consuming task, he recounted his experience at his home in San Jose, where he has lived for the past two years while working as a supervising immigration officer for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Van Thull was one of three staffers from the agency's San Francisco district -- which includes San Jose -- to contribute their time and energy to the effort.

"All three of them have commented on how good helping people in difficult circumstances made them feel," said Sharon Rummery, public affairs officer for the northwest region of the USCIS.

"I'd do it again in a heartbeat," Van Thull said.

Which is not to say that it was easy, he cautions.

The Concord native and UC Santa Cruz alum traveled the world before getting involved with the federal immigration agency, where he oversees benefits fraud investigations. It was his involvement there that led him to join a multi-agency volunteer list of federal workers -- ranging from border patrol to the Secret Service --who could be called at a moment's notice to help FEMA. The agency developed the plan after its much-maligned response to Hurricane Katrina.

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On Nov. 2, four days after Sandy struck stateside, Van Thull saw that volunteers were being summoned to help. But then the clock ticked away that Friday afternoon, leading him to believe he'd probably been passed over.

Within a day or so Van Thull was lugging a hastily packed suitcase onto a plane and flying to Emmitsburg, Maryland, home to the National Fire Academy, where he and his colleagues got a crash course in their relief assignments.

Van Thull and the rest of his 10-man cohort were assigned to community relations and spent the next day-and-a-half getting schooled on evaluating the situations of affected residents and how to let them know about FEMA aid.

Within a couple of days, they were on a bus to New York. They came to a stop in Staten Island and the docked troop ship Kennedy, which would be their floating home for the next month and a half. After settling into a 30-bunk barrack, they had to wait out a snow storm before they put boots on the ground.

"They took us to a street, and we went door-to-door," Van Thull said. "All kinds of neighborhoods. Rich, poor, undamaged, heavily damaged."

As they told borough residents about what how FEMA could help, they found themselves unwittingly becoming sounding boards for frustrations over power outages, spoiling food supplies and unreliable heat in the face of sub-freezing temperatures.

"We were almost a punching bag for people," Van Thull said.

Some homes were flooded to their roofs, others had their basements underwater. In other cases, trees fell on homes and cars. Scattered boats were a common sight, with owners abandoning their claims to the vessels.

For the first two weeks, Van Thull and his team worked every day, returning to the troop ship at night. He kept in touch with Melania, his wife of eight years, by phone. By the third week, they were getting Saturdays off. They ate Thanksgiving dinner by ship light inside the Kennedy.

With each new day walking their beat, Van Thull and his team got better at calming residents and helping them out. In one instance, an elderly couple lost their car to the floodwaters and could not leave home. Some were running out of food that hadn't spoiled. The team summoned the Red Cross, who took care of the helpless residents.

They got a similar response when they came upon an elderly woman who still had no heat. They got her electric blankets to weather the nights. When another homeowner still had no power after weeks, the team made sure the residents got the full attention of the relief effort.

On Dec. 10, Van Thull was told he would be going home by week's end. He was near the maximum time of his deployment, and the Kennedy had to ship off elsewhere. Throughout the entire effort, he was fighting a cough that for a spell worsened into bronchitis. Now he was getting his own relief.

"I was ready to go home," he said. " We saw our mission was done."

Van Thull was back at work a short time later and has since resumed his life in San Jose. He continues to keep in touch with his team, whose members hailed from all over the country.

"We knocked on every door on the island," he said. "We got a lot of satisfaction helping a lot of people."

He also took from the experience the need to be prepared and alluded to the earthquake risk here at home. He was also heartened by the way people looked to help in the aftermath of Sandy, including volunteers who weren't affiliated with a government or relief agency.

"There was this sense of community. People were just coming to strangers' houses and helping them tear out rotting drywall," Van Thull said. "Seeing people come together like that, it was encouraging and inspiring."